Guernsey birds and moths

nonsense : A couple of minor disasters in the last day or so. First of all I was demonstrating to my year 7 class how reactive Calcium metal is in acid and explaining that I couldn't let them do it themselves as it is too dangerous . . . . .  So I had some kind of brain-malfunction and instead of dropping one or two grains of Calcium in the test-tube, I dropped in one or two hundred grains. Of course I was just holding the test tube in my bare hands so all the class could see and the fiery-hot acid erupted out of the test-tube and all over my hand! Of course, I couldn't just drop it as it may have splashed all over the kids in the first row (I know, what a hero) so I had to make my way across the room to the sink. By this time, small pieces of Calcium metal had been pushed out of the tube and were now stuck to my skin, reacting with the acid still foaming out of the top. It was a few giant steps beyond agony. I eventually washed it off and taught the rest of the lesson with my hand under the cold tap - the kids of course all thought this was hilarious - and I taught the rest of the day with my hand in a cup of cold water. After about 4 hours the pain ceased but it did not look a pretty sight. At least my class should now be very careful with their acid experiments this year.

Then this morning the shower decided to break on 'ON'. Now our drain is only at a shallow angle and the water doesn't disappear very easily and the base fills up if you stay in for too long. So I am in my soaking clothes in the shower trying to get the valve-thing closed as the water sprays all over my head and is lapping over the edge onto the bathroom floor. Eventually we turned off the water at the mains just before we flooded the place. Its a laugh a minute here!

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Ca (s)  +  HCl (aq)  =  IDiOt (d'oh!)                                                           A paper cutting in case you didn't believe me!